Biography&Autobiography

Luckiest Man - The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig

5 stars (The Way Baseball Should Be!) - This book is tremendous ... on so many levels. Most importantly, it gives the reader a good and solid understanding of the man. I have always been a Lou Gehrig fan but I have never fully appreciated the complete humility of the man. Additionally, the description of baseball and its players, clearly illustrates the tremendous differences between the game as we know it today and the way it once was. 4 stars (Moving and Lively Book) - This was a very well-written and moving book. As a huge Yankee fan and someone who has read many baseball books, this book is great. One gets a real sense of the times, along with Gehrig the person, and the beauty of the sport of baseball. As a student of the important philosophy Aesthetic Realism (www.aestheticrealism.org) founded by Eli Siegel, poet and critic, I've learned what makes a thing beautiful from a work of art to a great leaping catch in baseball. Mr. Siegel stated, "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves." Certain sentences and descriptions in this book I found beautiful -- they have a relation of energy, zip and also exactitude. These are opposites that the game of baseball has too. I have recommended this book to others. 4 stars (What made Gehrig tick) - You don't have to be a baseball fan to appreciate LUCKIEST MAN. Certainly there's enough diamond action to satisfy the sport fan, but Eig's objective seems to be more of a psychological analysis of the great Yankee clean-up hitter (Ruth hit third). Eig goes into great depth about Gehrig's relationship with his mother. Apparently no woman was good enough for her son. Gehrig was thirty before he finally took a wife and that seemed to be an act of desperation as he sent Eleanor a diamond necklace before they actually went out on a date. For me the best part of the book was when Gehrig found out he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Talk about grace u...
Simon - Schuster :: Biography & Autobiography & Sports :: United States :: Sports - General :: Sports - Baseball :: Patients :: Gehrig :: Lou :: :: Biography&Autobiography :: Biography & A :: Luckiest Man - The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig

Fever Pitch

5 stars (Reveals the behaviour of a typical fanatic soccer fan!) - All Arsenal soccer fans should read this book by Nick Hornby. It shows his obsessions for Arsenal with a fine sense of homour and wit. It is filled with RAW honesty which will definately increase the male hormones of the British working class-soccer fans. Hornby also shows his passion for the ups and downs of the typical fan of Arsenal. His emotional outbursts are extreme (to say the least) and would leave the reader laughing on the floor. A MUST read! 3 stars (Not bad, but never engaged me) - I like Nick Hornby and I'm an Arsenal fan, so I should have loved this book...but I didn't. Maybe I'm just not a fan of memoirs, or maybe a memoirist has to have a more interesting life than Hornby's, but I was just never caught up in this book. I was never wondering what was going to happen, never wondering how things were going to work out. If I hadn't been an Arsenal fan, I probably would have put this down one day and never picked it up again, not because it's bad but because it's forgettable. It just meanders from one random, wry musing to another. A word of warning: if you don't know anything about English soccer, you might have a hard time following this book. Do words like "Anfield" and "Gazza" ring any bells? If not, you're not part of the target audience, and it could be tough going. 5 stars (Oi! A Confessional of Passion and Frenzy by Hornby) - FEVER PITCH is basically a tribute to English football. Hornby (as a real-life Arsenal fan) has a unique talent here in weaving a story out of autobiographical moments with a slight narrative where the glory and obsessive nature of football is eeked out on every page. Within this you can quickly deduce that the thing always and forever on a football fan's mind is HIS fixture list and everything else (friends, family, love and moments) is second best. Each year, each month, each season of the narrator's life can be calculated and described by footballing m...
Riverhead Books :: Sports - General :: Soccer :: Literary :: Hornby :: Nick :: Historical - British :: Great Britain :: English authors :: Biography&Autobiography :: Biography & Autobiogr :: Fever Pitch

License to Deal - A Season on the Run with a Maverick Baseball Agent

1 stars (hypocrisy) - The author is a whole host of contradictions. While he rails against the ethics of sports agents, he himself embarassingly participates in questionable activities to add to his sports roster. The book is a boring read, and after awhile his "holier than thou" attitude begins to grate on you. 5 stars (Informative look into the lives of baseball agents.) - Review: License to Deal by Jerry Crasnick License to Deal by Jerry Crasnick is sub-titled "A Season on the Run with a Maverick Baseball Agent". The agent is Matt Sosnick, whose most famous client is Dontrelle Willis of the Florida Marlins. Crasnick paints Sosnick and his partner Paul Cobbe as good people and friends to their clients. All this in a field of sharks and wolves. Sosnick and Cobbe routinely try to keep their own clients from abandoning and jumping to other agents while the players are still in the minors or just starting out their careers in the majors. Crasnick makes Sosnick look like the victim. But as Crasnick shows (although he never explicitly states it), Sosnick-Cobbe have their own moments where they are rude, arrogant, aggressive and steal other agents' clients as well. The bottom line is this is a cut throat business and either all agents are victims or none of them are, because they all get screwed and all try to screw others too. Crasnick also writes about other agents and baseball deals in the book. There is a whole chapter on Scott Boras, as well as many other anecdotes and quotes from other agents and baseball management interspersed throughout the book. Overall, Crasnick does a good job describing the life of agents. The middle-tier ones like Sosnick and Cobbe and the stars like Boras and Moorad (now in management with the Diamondbacks). I recommend this book for those that are interested in the business side of baseball. 5 stars (Sports Book of the Year) - Without question, this will go down as the best sports book of 2005. Jerry Crasnick stumbled ...
Rodale Books :: Sports & Recreation & Baseball & General :: United States :: Sports agents :: Sports - General :: Sosnick :: Matt :: Business :: Biography&Autobiography :: Biography :: License to Deal - A Season on the Run with a Maverick Baseball Agent

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

5 stars (Most moving and gripping) - I was not sure when I started this book whether I really wanted to know the details the author went thru, and early in the book I was astounded at how imprudent he was. But the account soon caught me up and I was totally mesmerized, and the book I found to be a triumph, ranking with Alive, by Piers Paul Read, as one of the most gripping survival stories I have ever read. I felt it was better than Touching the Void, by Joe Simpson, even though that book is on edge of the chair reading. Despite Ralston's imprudent behavior I found him an admirable person and the fact that he is still climbing mountains and doing other unbelievable things I concluded was inspiring, imprudent as it no doubt is. This is a great reading experience. 5 stars (Hard place felt) - This book was very good at describing the surroundings in such detail that the mood was set for the story. Granted, even though it is a true story, one could just feel the tension mounting, and could follow the time line of events that led to Ralston's freedom from his rock/hardplace captors. 1 stars (Dont Read this Book) - This is the most boring book I have ever tried to read. It was a Summer Reading book and I couldnt even finish it. It is soo technical, it is courageous how he lived through that ordeal, but the book dragged and was horrible, i give it 0 stars. ...
Atria :: Biography & Autobiography & General :: Outdoor Life :: Mountaineering :: Inspirational - General :: Hiking :: General :: Biography&Autobiography :: Biography & Auto :: Between a Rock and a Hard Place